#though they still need bases

[ryuuka-balaen]

I'd dug it up earlier to send to someone as it had been relevant in conversation recently, so may as well post it here too; a lil bit of CatLore(tm) for my main Warhammer Army; the Knights of Noble House Valere.

When I decided that it would be healthy for me to try to partake in physical hobbies more often rather than spending all my free time online and having almost exclusively online friendships, the first thing I went to try was Warhammer. I'd been trying to get into it for nearly a decade and I've always loved my funny little minis and models so it was the most obvious choice to me, especially being that I'd just been given a new 3d printer I could make terrain and models with. However, this came with a small issue; I didn't like the style of the models I already had as much as I used to. Which meant I needed to browse through which factions 40k had to choose from, and find something with an aesthetic I did enjoy.

What I found that i liked was the Imperial Knights and Grey Knights.

First, some official lore as Context;

Imperial Knights are huge mechs owned by influential families called Noble Houses. Before the founding of The Imperium of Man wherein the God-Emperor took the Golden Throne, the Noble Houses were some of the first humans to leave Terra and colonize the galaxy in an event referred to as The Long March. For the purpose of this colonization, they built huge agricultural mechs with chainsaws that could reave forests for lumber, explosives that could level mountains for construction, etc. Of course, these tools were repurposed into weapons of war. The mechs were equipped with armour that can withstand a nuke and autocannons that shoot shells wider than a man is tall. The planets colonized by these Noble Houses are referred to as Feudal Worlds. When the Age of Strife began and humanity lost a significant portion of the knowledge required to create and upkeep their most advanced technologies, contact between distant worlds was also lost. Many Feudal Worlds that were isolated from this regression have yet to be rediscovered by The Imperium.

Grey Knights are the God-Emperor's Special Boys who live on Saturn's moon Titan in a Grand Fortress-Monestary. unlike other chapters of space marines, there are only every 800 Grey Knights at any one time, and every single one of them is a psyker and has mad wizard powers. They also all wear ~Special Boy~ armour that's been sanctified and blessed with Mystical Rituals that makes them harder to kill than your average Space Marine. They exist only to fight invasions of the Daemon forces of Chaos, and will take any measure to do so. The whole thing is very edgy and they try very hard to be cool.

Unfortunately, the rules of warhammer40k don't normally allow one person to use models from two different factions in their army at the same time, and doing so is referred to as a "Soup Army" which is generally very frowned upon by the gaming community. Regardless, I happen to be and continue to be a fool of a kitty that likes my funny little Knights, and what I wanted to do was run an army that's made half and half of the two factions I like.

That begs the question though; Why would these two factions be fighting together? the Grey Knights are Daemon Hunters, and as such only fight against those corrupted by Chaos, and while the Noble Houses of the Feudal Worlds which have been rediscovered by The Imperium do fight alongside The Imperium, they don't do so Often or Consistently. (And, by game rules, while any imperium army is permitted to field either one large or up to three small Imperial Knights models, that isnt enough for me)

While I do like the Imperial Knights official lore, I'm pretty neutral on that of the Grey Knights (as much as I do like to make fun of them, the idea of an order of paladins that'll show up anywhere, anytime to lay the smackdown on some demons is pretty cool). So, my solution to that question was; What if they aren't Grey Knights? Any military that's fielding gigantic irreplaceable Death Mechs is also going to employ footsoldiers, aren't they?

The Knights I paint and play are of the Noble House Valere, one of the many to take part in The Long March and the many to still be isolated following the Age of Strife. The House, however, has not been idle in it's isolation. From the time contact was lost in the 25th millennium House Valere has continued to make technological progress, re-engineering the systems utilized in their great Knights to smaller and more compact forms, to create Exosuits in which even an untrained wearer could rival a Space Marine in combat. While this is surely impressive, the real feat of innovation achieved by Valere's researchers is undoubtedly their progress in harnessing The Warp. Normally only Psykers would be able to utilize the reality-bending power of The Warp, however the continued study and research between the 25th to the 41st millennium has seen these researchers engineer methods for machines to make use of The Warp, and integrating this into the Exosuits of House Valere's Knights allows every one of their footsoldiers to wield the power of a Psyker.

The current Standing Army of House Valere, which is to say the models I currently have (though many are currently unpainted), numbers at six Knight Mechs, one Armoured Troop Transport, and seventeen Exosuit Soldiers.

In Game Terms that's;

one Knight Preceptor, two Armiger Helverins, and two Armiger Warglaives for 1,000points of Imperial Knights,

one Nemesis DreadKnight, one Brother-Captain, one Brotherhood Champion, one Razorback, five Terminators, five Grey Knights, and five Purifiers for 1,000points of Grey Knights,

which all together makes a happy Tournament-Standard sized army roster of 2,000points.

House Valere's age of peace is not to last much longer, as the universe permits none to escape it's wrath and there are a great many who, whether for Tech-Heresy, claims of territory, or simply Hunger, would see The House's citizens dead.

As a footnote; I do want to clarify that when i wrote this i felt like an absolute madwoman and it seemed very Chuuni / "9th-grader's Overpowered Self-Insert OC" but fuck it cringe is dead, I'm having fun, and others have said its neat so im keeping it.

[beebfreeb]

To all my long-term followers: You have to look through all of my art and deduct exactly what's wrong with me. I know you can do it by now.

[starry-bi-sky]

Out of Context Stuff for a Danyal Al Ghul au i haven't posted - Pit Beast Danyal

Damian, 13: Look, Danyal, -- I am so sorry for everything that happened between us in the League, I hope you can forgive me.

Danny, 10 (allegedly): (has been secretly plotting to murder Damian this whole time, is still gonna do it obvs, but is going to make it significantly less painful now)

Danny: I-- of course, older brother. :]

--------

Bruce: what do you have there, Damian?

Damian:

Danny: (a hulking 10ft pit beast standing beside him, growling idly with ram horns gouging out his eyes and a second set of horns jutting into the air, spines down his back, and a long, spiked tail with an animalistic, skull-like face)

Damian, who smuggled him in (they've made amends): a smoothie, father

----------

Damian: this is my little brother Danyal, i murdered him when he was five. He festered in rage for the last half-a decade, took over a League mountain base in Switzerland, murdered everyone inside and then tried to murder me when I went to investigate with Drake.

Danny: hello!

Damian: we're cool now

----------

Damian: thoughts on resurrection

Danny, (a full ghost): i will succeed in murdering you if you try it

Damian: we'll put a pin in it then

----------

Danny (still instilled with League values): why don't we just murder him??

Damian, on patrol (Danny followed him): we don't murder people, Danyal

Danyal:,,,,are you sick, Dami?? Have you been possessed? Why not!?

(There is raucous laughing through the comms)

----------

Danny, five, pre-death: Dami! :D

Danny, dead, vengeful: Older brother (:

Danny, post-forgiveness: Dami! :]

-------

For some actual context: Danny is fully dead in this au, its a result of the classic DPxDC Demon Twins "death duel" trope but instead of Danny getting revived, he stays fully dead. Danny was five, Damian was seven. His ghost lingered though, and due to the proximity of the pits his ghost steadily absorbed the ambient energy it was letting off. The pits are not corrupted ectoplasm in this au, it's just liquid ecto.

Which means Danny's corruption from an angry and hurt little ghost boy to an unrecognizable monster is from his own doing. It's a result of him stewing in his hurt and anger for years, it physically warped him. He's very powerful. Danny can travel between League Bases but chose a small, out-of-the-way base in the Swiss mountains to fester in and then just. Never Left.

His influence steeped into the very foundations of the building, allowing him to transform and warp the rooms and hallways for his own bidding, Meaning he could turn it into a seemingly unending labyrinth if he so wished to, and block the entrance.

Eventually, blinded (both metaphorically and physically) by his own rage, Danny grew powerful enough to appear physically in the living realm and attacked everyone in the base, slaughtering them all and leaving the base abandoned. He attacks anyone who dares enter -- whether that be other league members, or the unfortunate hiker who stumbled across the base. His conscious is steeped into every nook and cranny of the building, there is nowhere you can hide where he can't find. Nobody leaves without his explicit say so. Nobody ever does.

Him appearing as ten years old before Damian in the skits above is his own physical doing. First it was to prevent Damian from being suspicious of him. Damian initially thought Danny was revived with the pits, he was too busy with his own training afterwards to notice that Danny never showed up again, and when he did notice, he assumed it was because Danny was too ashamed of his loss to face him. He'd always forget to ask about him.

Then it becomes a personal choice to appear as ten. It's how old he would've been had he been alive.

danny forgiving Damian is kinda for an offshoot branch of the main au. Whereas the main au takes the form of a ps4 first person horror game where Damian and Tim are investigating the Base for Plot Reasons. There's no sign of the rumored "monster" living inside until the end, where Danny, who was found inside the Base and has been happily "helping" them look around, manages to persuade Damian into splitting off from Tim in order to "show him something."

This something turns out to be Danny revealing that he never really forgave Damian for that fight, and he reveals through a horrifying transformation, that he was the monster the whole time. Which the game subtly hints at throughout as Danny's strange behavior becomes harder to ignore.

First from his insistence to only refer to Damian as "older brother" (when before the duel he always called him Damian or Dami), to him right off the bat denying the existence of a monster when questioned. ("There's no monster here, older brother. It's just me.") To other various things, like his knowledge of the outside world not matching up to modern times or things going on with the league outside of the base, or what happened to the other league members.

This whole idea was inspired by the song "Scylla" from Epic the Musical, with Danyal being the voice of Scylla as well as Odysseus, while Damian stands as Eurylochus. The instrumentals after Scylla says "hello" is him turning into the pit beast, and Scylla's "drown in your sorrow and fears" part is danny, as the pit beast, snarling at Damian while he attacks him.

There's a Good Ending, a Bad Ending, and a True Ending. The Bad Ending results in Damian being killed by Danny, it happens when Damian decides not to question or suspect Danny and treats him kindly. The Bad Ending is a cutscene, where Danny kills Damian quick and painlessly.

Meanwhile the Good Ending is Damian killing Danny. This is a boss fight, and it happens when Damian treats Danny coldly and suspiciously the whole time. Danny as a result, decides to make Damian's death painful as he had planned to, which is why it's a boss fight because it only causes him to double down on his anger.

The True Ending is Damian escapes with Tim. It happens when you treat Danny warmly up until the last minute, where when Danny proposes to Damian that he wants to show him something, Damian goes to talk to Tim and finally, reluctantly agrees that something is off with Danny, and that he'll be careful going in. It starts off with the boss fight until a third through, where it then changes to a cutscene where Tim manages to get the door open and Damian escapes out. It's then a chase scene down a never-ending hallway as the building actively works to keep you trapped inside. But you eventually make it to the exit so long as you avoid all the projectiles and doors.

Remember when I mentioned that Danny only lets people leave when he wants them to? That's where the treating Danny kindly throughout the game comes into play. It causes him to second guess himself and, eventually, reawaken and strengthen the love and admiration he had for Damian prior to his murder. It's why in the Bad Ending he kills Damian quickly -- because by then, he loves him enough that he doesn't want him to suffer, but is still so consumed by his rage and need for vengeance that he kills him anyways. That quiet part is what allows Damian (and Tim) to find the exit, because some part of Danny still loves Damian enough that he wants him to live.

The True Ending ends with a cutscene of Damian and Tim tumbling out into the snow/grass outside of the base. Damian looks up back to the entrance to see Danny standing there. But rather than a ten year old boy, there's a little five year old Danyal Al Ghul instead. He stares at Damian emotionlessly, blood seeping from his chest, staining his clothes, and little, bloody sword in his hands and tearstains on his cheeks, before he turns away and disappears back into the building.

[egophiliac]

have you seen the new nightwear groovy? alas, the dream of the animal onesies or the pillow fight groovy are dashed 😞 - i have yet to see the card's story but i assume that yuu is interviewing the boys again this year like the birthday boy cards cause there's no other characters in the card (?)

I too am disappointed that we didn't get a big full-on pillow fight. 😔 but he DOES battle by throwing his pillow, so at least we get some cushion action in there!

it looks like this round of birthday cards aren't going to be interviews/conversations, at least not for most of it -- the first part was Jamil talking to Ortho (who he duos with) about what his dormmates are doing for his birthday (they're setting up a surprise party/parade (because Kalim) but they're doing an extremely bad job of it and he's having to go around making sure that they don't screw it up) (being Jamil is suffering). second part was Jamil talking to his (unvoiced mob) roommate and answering Crowley's School Improvement Survey (he wants bigger bathrooms) (also a fridge in his room) (actually, make that a whole kitchen) (but mostly bigger bathrooms). then third part was his ~morning routine~, aka talking to himself about his hair and makeup, as one does in a visual novel. it's less cohesive than the previous birthday stories, but it's all pretty chill and there's some fun stuff in there! (Najma sent him hair stuff for his birthday that's way too fancy and he can't decide if she did it to annoy him or not. truly, being Jamil is indeed suffering.)

if all the cards are going to be about nightly/morning routine though, we're going to absolutely melt when we get to Vil, brace yourselves

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS Height Poll: Who is (technically) the tallest character. Please remember that these polls are for fun!

[lonicera-edulis]

While I am at it, decided to draw this request as well (thank you, I didn't even count that this silly au will get someone's interest outside of my tired mind; I will also draw the rest of ideas from your ask later).

[chiropteracupola]

a few friends from the Wood and the Riverbank

[0m3n-0f-d3ath]

💥Shiva Yvanie

Rough first design of my dnd character💥

[makotonaegiunderstander]

something I’ve been thinking abt is how many people think Makoto is immune to despair. I don’t think he is. I think becoming the ultimate Hope was BECAUSE he felt despair. He wouldn’t have fully reached that point without Junko. Makoto becoming such a beacon was his last attempt to avoid completely falling and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel despair, it was because he was too damn stubborn to allow everything to go to waste and he refused to sacrifice his beliefs for someone else’s. His inner monologue tells me he DID experience the same new low the other suvivors did in the final trial, but at the point where he had the choice to give up and die, he looked at the others and he looked at Junko and he couldn’t allow it to happen, not out of self preservation, but because the idea that Junko would have control over their lives made him FURIOUS. and that utter refusal to die kicked in, wether luck or otherwise, and he made the concious effort for one last push while something in him was breaking. He had to be broken in order for the Ultimate Hope to come through so aggressively, bc it could only exist in the face of the Ultimate Despair. He snapped the same way she did, but in the other direction. In what could have been his final moments he chose to embody everything Junko wasn’t, and every single optimistic and luck fueled ideal in him suddenly charged forward and pushed him. It was a combination of the final straw and a choice. Makoto isn’t immune to feeling despair, he’s just too stubborn to fall into it of his own volition. I think that’s why I like that scene in DR3 so much. People were SO SHOCKED Makoto actually fell for the tape, that he actually became despair for a moment. I saw people getting mad or disappointed, saying it was pathetic and Makoto seemed to fall from some sort of pedestal for them. Honestly part of me wonders if that sort of mentality, which clearly people had in universe, affected Makoto a bit. Like he started to see himself as less of a person, subconsciously. Prompting him to take more risks, less self preservation, act way more bold. It seems he has to be reminded a lot not to put himself in danger by his friends, to not do something too reckless. All over the place I would see in regards to that scene either this frivolous ‘oh this was just angst drama with no meaning behind it’ or ‘he can do better than that. he’s so weak’ or ‘come on, there’s no way he’d fall into despair, he’s the Ultimate Hope!’ This kind of mentality, which was kind of ironic considering Ryota was there the entire time saying the same thing and treating Makoto the same way. Like Makoto was superhuman. Like Makoto didn’t feel despair the same way ‘normal people’ did. In a way that was also how Munakata saw Makoto. Makoto stopped being a PERSON to the world when he became Ultimate Hope, he became a concept, a belief system, much the same way Junko ascended beyond herself. But the difference is that treating Makoto that way is the opposite of the reason Makoto became such a representative for hope. He wasn’t doing something no one else could. He was doing something everyone had the chance to, he just… was a little more optimistic, a little more stubborn, a little more ‘gung-ho’ about things. He just took the lead where no one else did, where no one else knew they even COULD in the face of Junko’s unstoppable force. She had overcome the biggest threats and obstacles in the world, what could one person do? And the answer Makoto found was, anything. Everything. It doesn’t all rest on Makoto, he’s just the one that was inspired to try to do what seemed like the impossible. But as evidenced by the change in his friends after that trial, it’s clearly not something only Makoto is capable of. The others pulled out of despair thanks to Makoto, but it was their choice to do so.

“But… this world is so huge, and we’re so small. What can we do…? No, we can probably do anything. Yeah! We can do anything!”

[anyoldfandom]

Sometimes I remember that line in S3 meant to show how BK keeps up appearances of running Providence more humanely than WK where Rex says WK was so cheap that he didn't even buy individual stalls for the bathroom and then I remember that Rex got his own basketball court and locker room and Providence was constantly canonically paying for repairs for damages caused by Rex fighting EVOs and fighting EVOs rather than just immediately collaring them and paying for food and cages and such for incurables and EVOs waiting for Rex to cure them and paying to keep Paradise/Purgatory base afloat and then I think maybe. Maybe there is another reason WK was cheap.

[edwinisms]

i like to think, as a hc or a theory (because it’s definitely possible), that charles has had a few kisses throughout his high school years, sure, but past that he’s undeniably a virgin– well, kind of undeniably, because I think he’d deny it if found out by trying to use technicalities (“I mean that one time there was friction involved–“), but to any reasonable person, and by occult standards (see: edwin being a virgin sacrifice), he’s a virgin.

and i think this because it seems like him to fib about his level of experience (like he did when agreeing he’d sleep with crystal, matching her level of casualness about it) when in the presence of people who do, actually, have experience, in the hopes he doesn’t come off as lame or childish. given what we know about his “friends” when he was alive, they seem like the type to have teased or bullied boys– especially in their own circle– who haven’t gotten laid, or at the very least would’ve thought less of someone for it. and given what we know about charles, i don’t think he’d be nearly as sleazy and inconsiderate as his group when it comes to landing girls with the primary intention of adding to his body count. and considering he’s only supposed to be 16? and has never mentioned any significant relationships pre-death? it just seems unlikely.

all that to say– I can see him maintaining that facade of experience and confidence literally right up until the moment it matters, and in the heat of the moment getting nervous and embarrassed because “uhhh. so I may have been exaggerating some things.” though he’s not totally clueless either, I think it’d take a bit of a soft heart to heart moment for him to be reassured enough that he won’t fuck up and hurt his partner to go any further.

anyway not sure what the relevance of this is, but it’s something.

[cordycepsbian]

team snakemouth gijinka but more of a Fantasy™️ au than just regular humans. featuring our spin on the concepts of halflings and dwarves where they are creature animal. and leif is uh ??? the horrors

bonus doodle

[solradguy]

25 YEAR OLD MISSING LINK ORDER SOL BROCCOLI TRADING CARD DELIVERED TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOS GK behind it is by Nakayama Eiji

[t-u-i-t-c]

"But I don't think I made the wrong call, back then."

[pitske]

I think you need a Software Upgrade!

[realbeefman]

some of y’all clearly don't understand what it's like to avert your eyes when your friend starts changing in front of you and your heart starts pounding in your chest and you could say something, SHOULD say something, tell her to change her clothes in a different room and admit to this freakish attraction that you know she doesn't feel, ruin the friendship by coloring every moment of casual intimacy with the knowledge that you are a pervert who wants more, that you are a threat. you don’t say anything. and you look up and watch the pale expanse of her lower back from the corner of your eye as she pulls on a white blouse, and something lurches in your stomach and you laugh at the joke she just told even though you weren’t really listening to the set-up. later on you will feel sick and guilty and cry alone in a bed that feels empty, but for just a moment, you are laughing with a beautiful girl who loves you, and it doesn’t matter if it’s wrong